Markus Lüpertz

Markus Lüpertz
The Fallen Warrior, 1994, in Bonn

Markus Lüpertz (born Reichenberg, 25 April 1941) is a contemporary German painter and sculptor.

In the 1960s, Lüpertz worked primarily in Berlin, moving on to take a professorship at Karlsruhe at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe in the 1970s, then to Düsseldorf where he was for over twenty years director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, an art academy in Germany.[1]

During his early career as a painter, he won the 1970 Prize from Villa Romana and the 1971 "German Association of Critics Prize." As a writer, he has been editing his own journal since 2003, called Frau und Hund of which two editions in other languages have appeared (Signora e cane, in Italian, and Femme et Chien, in French). Currently(2011) Lupertz is displaying his new catalogue of work at the Michael Werner gallery in New York City. The show brochure reads: New works by the celebrated and controversial German artist explore themes of history and abstraction in paintings derived from landscape motifs. “Pastoral Thoughts” is the artist’s first major New York showing since 2005. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Trivia

As head of the Kunstakademie he was famed for patriarchal behavior and extravagant leniency towards certain rules and ethics within the school, rumor has it that he once signed the application form of a student solely because it was funny that she handed it to him at a book signing. It is notable that he also had large silver rings cast for each professor and a gold one for himself, bearing the insignia of the academy which he designed. These rings facilitate the opening of beer bottles and may have been inspired by the work of J. R. R. Tolkien.

References

  1. ^ Lewitan, Louis (6 January 2011). ""Ich bin einfach aus der Garnison spaziert"". Zeit. http://www.zeit.de/2011/02/Rettung-Markus-Luepertz. Retrieved 16 June 2011.